She's a whopper! Giant baby weighing 13lb 7oz is born - without any painkillers

Thursday 8 August 2013 12:58 BST

A British mother has given birth to the biggest ever baby born naturally in Spain, a hospital has said.

Maxime Marin, 40, did not even need an epidural painkiller to deliver the baby girl who weighed 13lb 7oz - around twice the size of an average baby.

Newborn Maria Lorena Marin is in "perfect health" following the straightforward delivery at Hospital Marina Salud in the Mediterranean city of Denia yesterday morning, the hospital said in a statement.

Dr. Javier Rius, the chief of gynecology at the hospital, said in his 40 years of practice he had never known a baby born naturally to weigh so much.

Ms Marin said she expected the baby, born after 41 weeks, to be "big but not that big" as her three older children each weighed more than 9lb 14oz at birth.

She brushed off the five hour labour as "simple" and gave birth without an epidural, a painkiller delivered into the spine during childbirth.

Ms Marin and the baby's Colombian father, Jaime Marin, said everything went well.

The heaviest baby ever born weighed 23lb 12oz in Canada in 1879, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. But the baby, whose mother Anna Bates had giantism, died 11 hours later.

In 1955 a baby boy weighing 22lbs 8oz was born to Carmelina Fedele in Aversa, Italy.